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The Downfall of Irish Whiskey: History of a Vanished Empire

How Irish whiskey fell from the world's dominant spirit to near extinction in the 20th century: the Coffey still, Phylloxera, Prohibition and trade wars.

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For much of the 19th century, Irish whiskey was the leading whiskey in the British and American markets. In London and New York, Dublin pot still whiskey was widely treated as the benchmark and often sold for more than Scotch. The great Dublin distilleries (John Jameson, William Jameson, John Power & Son, and George Roe & Co.) were among the largest industrial distilleries in the British Isles.

Yet by the late 1970s, an entire distilling nation had been reduced to just two operating distilleries: Bushmills in County Antrim and the new Midleton distillery in County Cork, opened in 1975.

The catastrophic collapse of Irish whiskey was not driven by poor quality or changing tastes alone, but by a perfect storm of technological conservatism, war, prohibition, and geopolitical conflict.

Timeline of the downfall of Irish whiskey. 1830: Aeneas Coffey patents his continuous two-column still. 1846: the Corn Laws are repealed, opening British ports to cheap grain. 1877: the Distillers Company Limited is formed. 1878: the Dublin distillers publish Truths About Whisky. 1909: a Royal Commission rules that grain spirit from column stills may be sold as whisky. 1920 to 1933: American Prohibition closes Ireland's most lucrative export market. 1932 to 1938: the Anglo-Irish trade war, with 20% British duties on Irish imports. 1966: Power, Jameson and Cork Distilleries merge to form Irish Distillers. 1972: Bushmills joins the group. 1975: the new Midleton distillery opens. 1976: distilling in Dublin stops. 1978: Coleraine closes, leaving two sites.

1. The Coffey Still and the Corn Laws (1830–1846)

Ironically, the technology that would eventually enable Scottish blenders to overtake Irish whiskey was refined by an Irishman: Aeneas Coffey, a former Inspector General of Excise in Ireland. In 1830, Coffey patented his continuous two-column still, building on earlier continuous designs such as Robert Stein’s.

The Coffey still could run continuously around the clock, producing vast volumes of high-strength, neutral grain spirit with remarkable thermal efficiency and minimal labour. In contrast, Irish distillers remained fiercely committed to traditional batch distillation in massive copper pot stills.

In 1846, the British government repealed the protectionist Corn Laws, opening British ports to cheap imported maize and grain. Scottish entrepreneurs rapidly adopted the Coffey still to distil this inexpensive grain into light spirit, which they married with Highland malts to create lighter, cheaper and more consistent blended Scotch.

Irish distillers dismissed these early blends as “silent spirit”, refusing to dilute their heavy, spiced pure pot still whiskey (made from a traditional mash of malted and unmalted barley). In 1878, the major Dublin distillers even published a joint manifesto, Truths About Whisky, attacking grain spirit as an industrial counterfeit. But consumers loved the consistency and lower price of Scottish blends.

2. The Phylloxera Crisis and the London Boom

From the 1860s to the 1880s, phylloxera, a tiny aphid-like insect, devastated European vineyards and cut supplies of French wine and Cognac. British drinkers who had favoured brandy looked for an alternative.

Scottish blenders seized the opportunity with energetic marketing and distribution networks in London. Backed by the grain distillers of the Distillers Company Limited (DCL), formed in 1877, Scotch whisky rapidly conquered the British Empire’s military messes, gentlemen’s clubs, and overseas colonial markets.

In 1909, the death blow to Ireland’s legal campaign arrived. A British Royal Commission appointed to rule on “What is Whisky?” concluded that spirit produced from continuous column stills using grain was entitled to be sold under the name “whisky” on equal legal footing with pot still spirit. The commercial floodgates were opened permanently.

3. War, Prohibition, and the Great Depression

If technological competition weakened Irish whiskey, the early 20th century shattered it completely:

  1. The First World War (1914–1918): Wartime grain restrictions, fuel rationing and requisitioning sharply curtailed distilling across Ireland.
  2. American Prohibition (1920–1933): The United States had been Ireland’s single most lucrative export market. Legal exports there stopped. Bootleggers are also said to have sold poor, sometimes dangerous, illicit spirit under fake Irish labels, which damaged the name of Irish whiskey with American drinkers.
  3. The Anglo-Irish Trade War (1932–1938): Following the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921) and the founding of the Irish Free State, a bitter economic dispute erupted with the British government. Britain imposed special duties of 20% on Irish imports, and Irish whiskey lost much of its access to British and Commonwealth markets, which Scotch blenders filled.

4. Consolidation and Survival

By the 1960s, Ireland’s remaining heritage distillers were bleeding cash and facing complete collapse. In 1966, the three surviving independent producers in the Republic (John Power & Son, John Jameson & Son, and the Cork Distilleries Company) agreed to merge, forming Irish Distillers (IDL).

Bushmills, the only other working whiskey distillery on the island, joined the group in 1972. In July 1975 the old Midleton distillery closed and the new Midleton distillery beside it began production. Distilling in Dublin, at Jameson’s Bow Street and Power’s John’s Lane, stopped the following year. Once the Coleraine distillery, also owned by the group, closed in 1978, virtually all Irish whiskey came from two sites, both owned by Irish Distillers.

The Modern Revival

The survival of Irish whiskey during its darkest decades laid the groundwork for its revival, told in our companion piece, The Rise of Irish Whiskey. Led by the global growth of Jameson, renewed interest in single pot still whiskey (like Redbreast and Green Spot), and a wave of new distilleries, the island had 50 operational distilleries by March 2025, according to the Irish Whiskey Association. Global sales rose from just under 5 million cases in 2010 to a record 16.2 million nine-litre cases in 2024, the association reports, although sales in the USA, its largest market, dipped slightly that year and a 15% US tariff applied from 2025.

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About the author

John Fegan

· Editor

Hailing from the land of haggis and deep-fried Mars bars, John was always going to find his way to whisky. He has run Uisge Beatha since 2015 and Whiskipedia.com since 2020.